Thursday, June 04, 2009

For the Children

The girl, whose name has not been released because she's a juvenile, pleaded guilty...

Cody Barden was hit by a vehicle and left unconscious by the side of the road. [More]
Via Avg Joe, who writes:
Unless I'm missing something here, the victim who is an under age kid gets his name in the paper but the under age criminal can't have her name in the paper.
The story identifies them both as high school students, but I guess it's possible Barden is 18...?

Regardless, I never did grok this business of shielding juvenile offenders from press scrutiny. If some adolescent reptile in my community is torturing kittens or the like, I'd like to know who the malformed monster is.

I guess I can see cases where due to the nature of the offense and the age of the perp it may be in everyone's best interest not to force them through life with a stigma, but that exception ought to be case-by-case as appropriate, as opposed to just a blanket media pass.

More often than not, it seems "Authorized Journalists" are champing at the bit to publish names of concealed carriers who haven't done anything wrong (well, except maybe applied for permission to exercise their right, but that's a different debate).

4 comments:

M. Derosier said...

I think the reason they withhold the names of juveniles is to not identify them until they are actually convicted - innocent until proven guilty. That said, I believe that if this were the case, the standard should be applied equally to adults if that truly is the goal. Journalistic ethics should also hold that a victim shouldn't be named unless permission has been granted. After all, a rape victim wouldn't like to have that fact get about, now would they?

AvgJoe said...

This juvenile in this matter was convicted and the juvenile victim was named but not the convicted juvenile criminal. The government and its media live in a make believe world that is clearly run by insane people who have no clue what the real world is about.
Criminals are very special to government parasites because they feed the parasitic system. Victims are a pain in the butt for government parasites because they provide nothing after the arrest and conviction of job creating criminal.
Frankly, the liberal media in this case blew their cover by showing their true demeanor. You can't make this stuff up.

cranky said...

The name of the victim is known because they buried him.

The paper would likely print the name of the offender if they had it, but cops are loathe to pass that on unless they hit them with adult charges.

AvgJoe said...

The victim is alive and well, you may want to read the story before stating such misinformation.
As far as the criminal's name that is public record and open for anyone to read. The media has made a choice to not print it by their own guild lines, which make no sense.